Page 73 of Scarlet Wars
I didn’t look back. Didn’t think about the gunfire, the screams, or the people I was abandoning mid-fight.
The battlefield vanished, swallowed whole by the portal, as I turned my back on my team without a second thought.
EIGHTEEN
EMMA
We spilled into a dense stretch of forest where the air was thicker, damper, and colder than the open field we’d abandoned. The canopy arched high overhead, branches tangled so tightly they strangled the moonlight into fractured shards that broke across the snow.
The silence here was suffocating, broken only by the groan of frost-laden trees and the ragged edge of his breathing as I slammed him against the rough bark of a pine.
The scents were different too, wet earth hidden beneath the snow, sap bleeding sharp and resinous from split branches, smoke trailing faintly on the wind from the battle we’d left behind. It felt as if the forest itself had gone still, every shadow leaning closer, waiting for the first scream.
My Skindo hovered just above his chest, its blades thrumming with menace. “You’re going to show me that warrant,” I said, voice low enough to chill the air between us. “Or you’re going to bleed out here, and no one will ever find your body.”
He only shrugged, though I caught the flicker in his expression, and the faint tremor betraying how much the magic had shaken him. “Pretty sure that’s in my future either way.”
I straightened, spine iron. “Fine. If that’s how you want to spend your last hour, so be it. But make no mistake, youwillshow me that piece of paper.”
With meticulous precision, I sheathed my Skindo back into its tattoo, the blades dissolving into ink against my skin. Then I let the scarlet energy spill free, a living current that coiled up and around his throat like a noose, tightening enough to make him choke.
He clawed at the invisible bind, eyes bulging, spit flecking at the corners of his mouth as he fought for air. I tilted my head, watching the panic bloom across his face, the way his boots scraped furrows into the snow as if he could somehow push himself free.
“Pain is a symphony,” I murmured as his strangled gasps grew louder. “Keep resisting, and you’ll be nothing but fucking music before the night’s over.”
The scarlet haze pulsed at my command, tightening, loosening, tightening again in methodical rhythm, enough to make him believe every next breath might be his last. His face purpled, veins standing out against his skin as he wheezed.
“Where is the warrant?” I asked, quiet but deadly, my focus locked on him. “Show it to me, or I’ll peel the truth out of you piece by piece until you’re begging me to end your life.”
I barely registered the portal flaring open behind me.
“Emma.”
The sound of my name was a blade, slicing through the red fog clouding my thoughts.
My body went rigid. Slowly—reluctantly—I turned, as if moving underwater.
James and Caden stood in the shadows of the trees.
James’s face was carved from stone, tension pulling every line taut, fury and fear warring beneath the surface. His fistswere balled so tight I could see the tendons straining white beneath his skin.
Caden, in contrast, looked maddeningly bored, like this was the least impressive situation he’d seen all week.
His gaze drifted lazily to the soldier thrashing under my haze, before his voice came out smooth, completely unbothered by the sight of it. “He’s going to need to breathe if you want him to answer you.”
I refocused on the soldier and eased the haze just a fraction. He doubled over, hacking and wheezing like he’d been cast asman dying loudly in the background.
I rolled my eyes. “Oh, cut the crap, you big drama king. I didn’t even crush your windpipe. If I had, you wouldn’t be whining, at least not this loud.”
“Emma,” James hissed. “Cease this. Whatever you think you need, this isn’t the way to handle it.”
My teeth ground together. “He has a copy of the warrant, the one written in my name. The one that led to my parents’ death. He refuses to share it with the subject of his actions. He’d rather invade an entire country than let the so-called criminal read the actual bullshit charge they made up!”
The haze cinched tighter, the soldier’s face purpling again as he clawed uselessly at his throat.
“Colt!” James sounded nearer to desperate now. “Tell her to stand down.”
Behind me, there was the faint scrape of movement, but no order came. When I finally glanced over my shoulder, I caught Caden leaning casually against a low branch, translating a cigarette out of thin air.
